Thursday, March 10, 2005

Bleeding Black & Gold

Nothing tests the father/son bond quite like a lawsuit.

The story goes something like this. Herb Lemke owns two personal seat licenses (PSLs) for seats inside Heinz Field. These licenses allow the owner to purchase Steelers season tickets for those particular seats. Herb's son, Dan, reportedly paid almost $2,000 to acquire the two PSLs from his dear old dad. You know, keep them in the family. Herb accepted the cash but did not give the licenses to his son. Instead, he is attempting to sell them to someone else for more money.

So Dan is taking his dad to court. He wants a judge to order his father to hand over the licenses, and he also wants reimbursed the money required to file the suit. That ought to make for some lively Easter conversation.

"Happy Easter. Sorry, Dan, but you don’t have the seat licenses to sit at the adult table.”

“That’s nice, dad. Maybe for about $2,000 I could secure two seats – one for me and one for my lawyer."

"Please pass the ham."

I'm not sure I would believe this story if it happened anywhere else. But this is Pittsburgh, where the fans bleed black & gold. Especially Steelers fans, whose collective sanity is questioned by the nation on a weekly basis during the cold months. Maybe some of the fans really are nutty, but I don't think it is because of the sports teams. I think it is genetic. I would imagine that the genes that make a father not honor a couple thousand dollar agreement with his kid are the same ones that make a son bring a lawsuit against his dad.

To be fair, the PSLs aren't for any shabby nosebleed seats. They are in section 142 of Heinz Field.

Remember, also, that the waiting list for Steelers tickets is somewhere around 10 years long. And that's for seats in a building across the river. Bring your own binoculars.

Still, you would think that these two could have had a conversation to work out some sort of agreement before lawyers were allowed to get involved. I guess that for the Lemkes, black & gold blood is not thicker than water.

"Did everyone on that side of the table get their subpoenas? C’mon, keep passing. The food is getting cold.”